Can you get Social Security disability for Asthma?

I am surprised at how many of my clients have breathing difficulties. Their diagnoses range from asthma to emphysema, and in my experience their symptoms generally do not improve with time.

If your symptoms are severe enough, Social Security can find you disabled because of asthma. A diagnosis on its own is not enough. In my practice, asthma is disabling to my clients in two ways: either the symptoms are severe enough on their own to keep them from working, or they combine with symptoms from other impairments to do the same.

How Social Security evaluates asthma: listing 3.03

Social Security examines asthma in its Listing of Impairments at Section 3.00, Respiratory Disorders, under listing 3.03.

Here is the part that catches almost everyone. Listing 3.03 has two parts, and you must satisfy both of them, not one or the other:

• 3.03A. Your FEV1, the volume of air you can force out in one second, must be at or below the value in Social Security’s table for your age, sex, and height without shoes. This measurement must be taken within the same 12-month period as the hospitalizations described below.
• 3.03B. Exacerbations or complications requiring three hospitalizations within a 12-month period, at least 30 days apart, with each hospitalization lasting at least 48 hours including hours spent in a hospital emergency department immediately before admission.

That conjunctive structure is what makes 3.03 demanding. By contrast, the listing for chronic respiratory disorders at 3.02, which covers COPD, can be met through any one of four separate routes. Someone with asthma who has excellent spirometry between attacks but is hospitalized repeatedly will not meet 3.03, and neither will someone with poor lung function who manages their attacks at home or in the emergency department without being admitted.

If you do meet both parts, Social Security will normally set a date to review your case rather than treating the finding as permanent, and your residual impairment is reassessed at that point. A review date of that kind says nothing about when your disability began. Your onset date is worked out separately, on the facts of your case.

The criteria changed, and older guidance is still circulating

For many years, listing 3.03 could be met by showing roughly six asthma attacks a year requiring physician intervention. Social Security rewrote the respiratory listings in 2016 and that is no longer the standard. Attack frequency alone no longer meets the listing; the current test is built on hospitalizations.

This matters because the old six-attacks figure still appears on a great many websites, including some law firm pages. If you have been told that six attacks a year will meet the listing, that information is out of date.

When your breathing test is done matters

Social Security will not accept spirometry taken when you are not medically stable. Specifically, the agency does not consider you stable within two weeks of a change in your prescribed respiratory medication, while you are experiencing or within 30 days of finishing treatment for a lower respiratory tract infection, or while you are experiencing or within 30 days of finishing treatment for an acute exacerbation.

For asthma this cuts in an awkward direction. Your FEV1 is often at its worst during an attack and close to normal between attacks, but the listing wants a stable measurement. Social Security also uses your highest FEV1 value from the test, not your average. If your only recent spirometry was done in the hospital during a flare, it likely cannot be used, and arranging a properly timed baseline test can matter more than anything argued at a hearing.

Most asthma claims are won on residual functional capacity

Many of my clients do not have test results or frequent enough hospitalizations to meet the listings, and their symptoms still seriously interfere with their ability to work. When you do not meet a listing, Social Security assesses your residual functional capacity, meaning what you can still do despite your condition. As with any claim, your condition also has to have lasted, or be expected to last, at least twelve months, which for asthma means the sustained pattern rather than any single bad stretch.

Asthma tends to limit work in ways that are distinct from other respiratory conditions:

• Environmental restrictions. Many people with asthma cannot tolerate dust, fumes, smoke, chemicals, strong odors, humidity, cold air, or temperature extremes. These restrictions rule out a great deal of industrial, cleaning, food service, and outdoor work, and they are worth having written explicitly into your records by your treating doctor.
• Unpredictable absences. Asthma is episodic. Someone may work well for three weeks and then miss several days entirely. Most employers do not tolerate that pattern, and it is often the strongest argument in an asthma claim.
• Exertional limits. Clients are often unable to stand or walk for extended periods, and sometimes become short of breath talking on the phone or performing sedentary tasks.
• Fatigue. Poor sleep from nighttime symptoms, and the effects of medication, leave many people unable to sustain an eight-hour day.

Some of my clients use inhalers, nebulizers, and even supplemental oxygen to help them breathe. Sometimes a breathing problem is apparent just from talking with someone. Other times it only becomes obvious when they exert themselves, which is exactly what a workday demands and what a short medical appointment does not reveal.

Your age, education, and work history matter at this stage too. A claimant of 50 or older with no transferable skills is in a considerably stronger position than a younger claimant with identical limitations, and at 55 the vocational rules shift again in the claimant’s favor. Since June 22, 2024, Social Security also looks only at work performed in the previous five years rather than fifteen.

Let Social Security know about your breathing problems even if asthma is not your primary reason for filing. The agency must consider all of your impairments in combination. Conditions that often accompany severe asthma, such as chronic bronchitis, reflux, sinusitis, obesity, and anxiety, can each worsen breathing or compound the limitations, and together they may carry a claim that asthma alone would not.

The medical evidence your claim needs

Useful evidence for an asthma claim includes:

• Baseline spirometry taken during a period of medical stability
• Hospital records with precise admission and discharge dates and times, since both the 48-hour length and the 30-day spacing turn on them
• Emergency department records, including time spent before admission
• A complete medication list, including rescue inhaler use and any oral steroid courses
• Documentation of triggers and any environmental restrictions your doctor has advised
• Treatment notes showing you have been following your prescribed treatment

Hospital dates deserve particular attention. Claims fail on this listing because records are vague about admission times or because an emergency department visit that turned into an admission was recorded as two separate events. It is worth checking those dates yourself rather than assuming the file is right.

Social Security also looks at whether your exacerbations happened despite following prescribed treatment. If cost, a lack of insurance, or side effects have prevented you from taking medication as prescribed, say so clearly and make sure the reason appears in your records. The agency is required to consider whether you had a good reason before holding non-compliance against you.

Filing and appealing

If you are unable to work due to asthma or any other disabling condition, you can start the process by filing an initial application. If your application is denied, as most are, appeal rather than starting again. Filing a Request for Reconsideration protects your original filing date and the back pay attached to it, and you generally have sixty days from the date on the denial notice. Most people have to attend an administrative hearing before they have a real chance at benefits.

The process can be lengthy and confusing, but persistence and good treatment records are often the keys to a successful outcome.

Talk with an Indiana disability attorney

If asthma is keeping you from working, contact my office for a free consultation.

Two things decide most asthma claims, and neither is the diagnosis. Whether your hospital records are precise enough about admission times and spacing to satisfy 3.03B. And whether anyone has written your environmental restrictions into the file, since those are what rule out the work Social Security would otherwise expect you to do.

I represent Indiana residents at every stage, from the initial application through a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge.